Split Second Read Free Page A

Benny,” he called out, laying his head on the pavement. He still wasn’t able to see his partner behind him. “My daddy’s gonna make a sermon out of this when I tell him I was stabbed with a crucifix.”
    A long, black shadow blocked the sky.
    Once again Del found himself looking into those empty, dark eyes. Albert Stucky loomed above him, tall and straight, a lean, muscular man with sharp features. He reminded Del of a vulture, perched with black wings pressed patiently against its sides, cocking its head, staring, waiting for its prey to stop struggling, to give in to the inevitable. Then, Stucky smiled as though pleased with what he saw. He raised and pointed Benny’s service revolver at Del’s head.
    “You won’t be telling your daddy anything,” Albert Stucky promised in a deep, calm voice. “Tell it to Saint Peter, instead.”
    The metal slammed into Del’s skull. A blast of brilliant light swirled together with oceans of blue and yellow and white and then finally…black.

PROLOGUE
    North Dade County Detention Center
Miami, Florida
Halloween—Friday, October 31
    D el Macomb wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. The stiff cotton of his uniform stuck to his back, and it was only nine in the morning. How could it be this hot and humid in October?
    He had grown up just north of Hope, Minnesota. Back home, ice would be forming at the edges of Silver Lake. His daddy would be writing his sermons while watching the last of the snow geese pass overhead. Del pushed wet strands off his brow. Thinking about his daddy reminded him that he needed a haircut. Crazy stuff to be thinking about. Even crazier that it was stuff that could still make him homesick.
    “So who’s the fucking asshole we’re chaperoning today?”
    Del’s partner startled him. He winced at Benny Zeeks’s language, then glanced over at the barrel-chested ex-marine to see if he had noticed. He certainly didn’t need another lecture—not that he didn’t have a lot to learn from Benny.
    “Guys said his name is Stucky.” He wondered if Benny had heard him. He seemed preoccupied.
    At North Dade County Detention Center Benny Zeeks was somewhat of a legend, not only because he was a twenty-five-year veteran, but because he had spent most of that time working up in Starke on death row and even on X Wing. Del had seen his partner’s scars from scuffles he’d won over X Wingers trying to avoid the coffinlike solitary confinement.
    He watched Benny shove his shirtsleeves up over his veiny forearms, not bothering to fold or roll them, revealing one of those legendary scars. It intersected a tattoo, a Polynesian dancer who now had a jagged red line across her abdomen as if she had been sliced in half. Benny could still make the dancer dance, flexing his arm and sending the lower half of her into a slow, sexy sway while the other half—the top half—froze in place, disconnected. The tattoo fascinated Del, intriguing and repulsing him at the same time.
    Now his partner climbed into the armored truck’s passenger seat, concentrating on negotiating the narrow steps up into the cab. The man moved slower than usual this morning, and Del immediately knew his partner had another hangover. He swung up into the driver’s seat, buckling himself in and pretending, once again, not to notice.
    “Who’d you say this asshole is?” Benny asked, while he twisted his thermos lid, the short stubby fingers desperate to get at the coffee. Del wanted to tell him the caffeine would only compound his problem, but after four short weeks on the job, he knew better than to try to tell Benny Zeeks anything.
    “We’re taking Brice and Webber’s run today.”
    “What the hell for?”
    “Webber’s got the flu and Brice broke his hand last night.”
    “How the fuck do you break a hand?”
    “All I heard was that he broke it. I don’t know how. Look, I thought you hated the monotony of our regular route. Plus, all the traffic just to get to the